The Roots of the Mountains

A valley people who have forgotten they were ever conquered, a dale, a market, a house of gold, and the Dusky Men coming over the mountains to take it — and a woman of the Wolf who has been raised among them and knows how they may be beaten. Morris designed the wallpapers still in production today, and wrote his late romances in an English deliberately stripped of Latin; the fighting is real, and so is the argument about what a free people is. Fifty-six plates, from Walter Crane to Ford Madox Brown, follow the valley through spring, harvest and home, matching the romance's turn from peaceful dale to hard-won freedom.